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Kudos & Kicks: Reviewing the good, bad and questionable

Emergency-response agencies in Collier County aren’t wasting time in taking advantage of a new state law to help make the area safer.

The new law requires emergency medical service agencies in Florida to report overdoses to the state. In Collier, the Sheriff’s Office and the county’s ambulance service could begin next month teaming up to take advantage of a mapping system showing where overdoses occur.

“If we know where there are a large number of overdoses, then our paramedics and emergency medical technicians can be aware of their surroundings and ensure they take proper precautions,” Collier EMS Chief Tabatha Butcher said in a statement.

Using that information, EMS also can stock certain ambulances with the drugs that revive patients after an overdose, she noted.

The Sheriff’s Office is using software to map where overdoses occur and the outcome, according to a news release.

“It will alert law enforcement and public safety officials to overdose spikes caused by a bad batch of drugs, or a new and growing supply of drugs entering our community,” Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said in a statement.

In the first four months of using the mapping program, the Sheriff’s Office reported it tracked 40 suspected heroin overdoses, including four fatal ones.

If Collier commissioners agree at an upcoming meeting, EMS will start taking advantage of the mapping program Oct. 1. This would be positive teamwork in response to a growing community concern.

Kick

There’s a better way to enforce traffic laws and increase the number of tickets written than the directives given by a few top Florida Highway Patrol administrators. They resigned after de facto quotas issued to troopers came to light.

Instead of setting ticket-writing goals that are easily interpreted as improper quotas, how about reducing the 8 percent trooper vacancy rate? That puts more officers on the road to write more tickets.

A good place to start is increasing trooper starting pay and giving raises, which thankfully Gov. Rick Scott and legislators agreed to do this year. Otherwise, the agency would continuously churn officers to other, higher-paying law enforcement agencies across the state.

An Associated Press account this week said the agency is authorized for nearly 2,000 troopers but reported it had more than 160 vacancies as of summer.

As we noted in an editorial Friday, Florida is failing to meet highway safety goals with fatalities on a three-year increase to nearly 2,500 a year. The state had set a goal to reduce highway deaths to 1,881 by the end of this year. Yet we’ve already almost hit that total with four months of 2017 to go, and some busy travel months on the road ahead.

So we’re not about to argue for lax enforcement of traffic laws nor reduced ticket-writing when fatalities and accidents are spiking.

Even so, top FHP administrators had to know better than to see their lengthy careers snared by emails directing troopers to write at least two tickets per hour. The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald reported on two such goal-oriented (quota) emails. Retirements or resignations of two top FHP administrators soon followed. The Associated Press cited a third departure this week as a result of the controversy.

The AP also reported the number of tickets written by troopers declined from 935,000 in 2014 to 749,000 in 2016. We’d hope it’s because drivers are in greater compliance with traffic laws. We’re not betting that’s the reason.

Kudos

Speaking of traffic enforcement, we applaud the Collier Sheriff’s Office for its initiative this week to dispatch motorcycle officers to trail several school buses as they picked up students on rounds.

Sheriff’s officials said they commonly get complaints that drivers are passing school buses picking up or dropping off kids.

Florida law requires drivers to stop if approaching any school bus with flashing red lights unless going in the opposite direction of the school bus on a divided highway with a raised median, barrier or at least 5 feet of unpaved space, sheriff’s officials said.